Brian Turmail, the vice president of public affairs and strategic initiatives for AGC, was interviewed by Equipment Today, a division of For Construction Pros, about the infrastructure issues created from a lack of funding. He explained how roads across the country were primarily built in the 1950s with the expectation of lasting for 50 years. Combined with the idea that the projected amount of traffic is vastly less than what has taken place, the results are road systems that are in desperate need of maintenance and repairs.

 

Turmail went on to say that this is theoretically an ideal time to make the necessary repairs with drastically fewer vehicles on the road due to the pandemic. However, the reduced road traffic has led to a more significant hindrance to infrastructure reparations as there is less gas being bought. The tax associated with those purchases, the fuel tax, has received significantly less revenue, which helps fund the roads and other infrastructure, putting them in even worse shape than before the virus.

The hope is that upcoming COVID relief and stimulus packages will include money for highway construction. However, Turmail is not optimistic that a large bill will be granted to that industry. Instead, he believes that several smaller bills are more likely to come through over time. If this is the case, then the understanding is that construction companies will have an easy time hiring the necessary number of employees for larger jobs due to the high unemployment rates. Time will tell if the highway and road systems receive the funding they need.

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